


Ceremonious Nerves

by tenrousei_kuroi



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: (it's almost a character), Brother/Brother Incest, Caning, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, Past Child Abuse, Psychological Trauma, Regulus Black Lives, Sirius Black is rather cruel, Underage Drinking, Underage Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:00:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28166637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tenrousei_kuroi/pseuds/tenrousei_kuroi
Summary: Something is never quite right. Harry can feel himself sinking further under Sirius’s grasp. Desperately he seeks out the one person who might be able to save him...if he can convince the other man to willingly return to his own familial helotry.
Relationships: Regulus Black/Sirius Black, Sirius Black/Harry Potter
Comments: 10
Kudos: 68





	Ceremonious Nerves

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve twisted Sirius into something dark again because he’s more fun to play with that way. Really, he’s quite evil here. A few events from the First War (mostly those concerning Regulus Black) have been tweaked but everything else remains largely the same, canon-wise. 
> 
> Title (and chapter titles) credit to Emily Dickinson, "The nerves sit ceremonious".

Harry Potter awoke at 2:26 a.m. to see his godfather standing over him. Harry had never taken a dreamless sleep potion before, and for a few moments, he was convinced that he was actually having a nightmare. Or worse, that one of the Dark Lord’s Death Eaters had followed him back from that graveyard, all the way to the hospital wing and was now…

Harry scrambled sideways and reached frantically for his wand, pain shooting through his bruised limbs as he did so. In an instant, Sirius’s hands were on him and he was muttering really quickly. As his eyes adjusted to the dark and he recognized his godfather’s voice, Harry calmed down. Now only slightly suspicious, he turned on his bedside lamp, bathing Sirius’s face in the soft orange glow.

“Sorry to frighten you,” Sirius apologized.

Harry took a moment to compose his breathing. “It’s...okay,” he said earnestly. Had it been anyone but Sirius, he would have been much angrier, but he had been so distraught at Sirius’s premature departure—so soon after the events in Little Hangleton—that he was far too happy to be cross. “What are you doing here?”

A crooked grin spread over Sirius’s face and he sat down on Harry’s bed, still holding Harry’s wrist in one hand.

“Had to wait for the nurse to finally leave before I could come back.”

“I thought Professor Dumbledore sent you off somewhere?”

Sirius nodded. “Yes, and I need to get going in just a moment. But I wanted to talk to you first...alone.”

Harry tilted his head questioningly, only to regret doing so immediately when the pain in his head flared up again.

“Forgive me if I’ve misread the room, but I don’t think you want to go back to your aunt and uncle’s?”

“No, I don’t!” Harry whispered vehemently. “I want to go with you! But Dumbledore—”

“Has his reasons. I just don’t happen to think they’re particularly good ones.”

“I’m confused,” Harry said. “What are you saying?”

Sirius ran his thumb gently over the healing wounds that still covered Harry’s arms—marks left from when Wormtail had bound him to the gravestone. “Dumbledore is trying to keep you safe by sending you to your aunt. He believes there may be some trace of your mother’s sacrifice present within Petunia.”

Harry thought for a moment. It almost made sense. “Does it matter anymore?” he asked. “Voldemort used my blood to come back, and it broke the protection I had before. What makes him think there’s any left at the Dursleys’?”

“I don’t think there is. And he doesn’t know for sure. The bottom line is, I think you’ll be just as safe with me. The original plan, I believe, was to send you home for a month or two and then send you to me after your birthday.”

“That long!” Harry said loudly and Sirius shushed him with a meaningful look at Madam Pomfrey’s office door, beyond which lay her quarters.

“Yes, yes, but I have a better idea.”

“And that is?”

Sirius grinned like a jackal. “Do your aunt and uncle usually come and pick you up from King’s Cross?”

Harry shrugged. “Yeah, they’re usually there.”

“Think you could persuade them to make a slight detour on their way back to Surrey?”

* * *

Harry hadn’t been this nervous in awhile. He felt like he was eleven years old all over again and staring at the ninth station platform surrounded by muggles—nervous and scared that he was being tricked.

But no, Sirius wouldn’t trick him, and he was nearly fifteen now. Yet still, as Aunt Petunia slammed the car door shut and the Dursley’s sped off, Harry felt his stomach swoop. He was alone in the middle of London, and very exposed.

“ _Don’t wait around,”_ Sirius had warned him. _“You shouldn’t be wandering the streets. Go straight in.”_

Harry uncrumpled the piece of parchment Sirius had given him, which read:

_Number 12, Grimmauld Place_

Nervous, Harry looked up at the buildings before him. These were grand houses for sure, and Sirius had said that one was his. _Number 12._

Only thing was, Number 12 didn’t seem to be there, and once again Harry was reminded of his first attempt to catch the train to Hogwarts. What was he supposed to do to find this magical building? What obvious piece of magic had it not occurred to Sirius to tell him? Worryingly, Harry took a step forward—

And that was all it took. There was a shimmer, a slight shake and Harry nearly stumbled to the ground. After catching himself, he looked up to see the housing development had expanded, this time to include one more home.

“Oh, thank god,” Harry muttered, and he dashed up the front steps. Here he paused. Part of him felt his should knock, but no...Sirius had told him to go straight in.

Walking inside Number 12 was like descending into a tomb. Just as it occurred to Harry to prop the front door open, he heard it slam shut behind him and after catching a glimpse of two staircases and an ornate hallway rug, he was bathed in stale darkness. He set his trunk and bag down slowly. Each made a soft thud on the wood floor.

That was when he heard the whispering. At first distant, it seemed to get louder. Blindly, Harry reached for the door behind him but couldn’t find it. After a moment of panic, he pulled out his wand, backed up until he hit a wall and sputtered, “lumos!”

The hallway lit up and the whispers paused. Harry took a tentative step forward—and immediately tripped over an umbrella stand which, horrifyingly, seemed to be made from the leg of some creature. A troll, perhaps?

There were no whispers, instead now there was shouting.

“Intruder!” A woman’s voice screamed. “How dare you come into my home! You vile—”

Harry panicked, looking around for the source of the voice. “I’m sorry,” he said frantically. “I didn’t mean to break in I just...”

Had Sirius sent him to the wrong house? No, that was absurd…

“Get out!” The voice screamed again, and Harry whipped around to face it. It was so close to him, it was...it was a portrait. Mouth open, Harry held out his wand to view a massive, life-size portrait on the wall across from the door. In its ornate frame was a witch of perhaps forty-five. She had long black hair that, despite being rather fancifully curled and pinned, was coarse and tangled. She was dressed in silky black robes and wore a massive dragonfly broach on her collar.

And she was screaming at Harry, calling him names that sounded like they might also be curses.

Heartbeat stilling somewhat, Harry ignored the screaming long enough to find a lamp in a hallway sconce. He touched it curiously, whereupon it crackled, sparked and finally sprang to life, dozens of other lights following suit.

And thus was Number 12, Grimmauld Place finally illuminated. The lights seemed to startled the woman in the portrait, who quieted down, sputtering a little.

“So,” she said grimly. “Yet another blood traitor, I assume?”

“I’m sorry?” Harry pocketed his wand and approached the portrait.

“There’s magic in those lights,” the woman explained. “If they turned on for you, then you must be a member of this Noble Household. Although,” she spat. “That does not make you any more welcome. Most likely you are the spawn of one of those traitors.” Her eyes widened. “Are you that child of Andromeda’s? Begone from here, you half-blood filth!”

Harry shook his head. “I don’t know who you’re talking about! I’m just…my name is Harry. Sirius sent me.”

He had said the wrong thing. At the mere mention of Sirius’s name, the woman flew into a frenzy, clawing at the boundaries of her portrait and pulling out her wand. Harry was almost certain that paintings of wizards couldn’t curse anyone outside of their pictures, but there was still enough doubt in his mind that he turned tail and ran. As he sprinted down the hall, more lights sputtered on and occasionally he caught a glimpse of what looked like the middle-aged woman dashing through another portrait. In a blind panic, he flew up some stairs, sprinted down a musty hallway towards a dull window so covered in dust it barely shone any light at all, and crashed against a random door.

Thankfully, the door gave way to his frantic scrabbling. He turned the handle and fell to the floor inside.

After a moment of yet more darkness, a pitiful fire sparked next to a bed and two small lamps lit themselves. They provided just enough light for Harry to see the ornate chandelier above the bed which had decided not to turn on.

Panting, he stood up and listened. He could not hear the woman yelling, and assumed she had stopped chasing him. After taking a deep breath, Harry pointed his wand at the ceiling and manually ignited the room’s main light source.

There was so much dust in the air that his eyes watered. The horrible smell of decay and old clothing nearly made him gag. This house had clearly been empty for some time, and this room even more so.

_Well, Sirius was in jail for over a decade…_

Curious, Harry started looking around. He needed to distract himself from the fear that somehow he’d made a mistake and was in the wrong place—and that Sirius was not coming to meet him.

Sirius had said he’d be here waiting for Harry, but he must have been delayed. He’d had business to finish with Lupin, and was set to be staying with Harry’s former professor for several weeks while they did some tasks for Dumbledore, but Sirius had promised to sneak away to get Harry settled.

But Harry had clearly beaten him here.

And now he was shuffling about an old bedroom, unable to stop himself from digging for clues as to who had slept here. For it certainly had not been Sirius.

The room was plastered with Slytherin banners, for a start. And it was so...tidy. If you ignored the decrepit smell and foul-tasting air, as well as the decade of dust, the room was pristine. Not a book out of place on the shelf, the writing desk folded shut (Harry’s own escritoire was constantly in use as an impromptu laundry hamper), and the bed perfectly made. Nothing sat out of place on the floor, the curtains were delicately tied shut. The only sign of life was a book on the nightstand, a placemarker sticking out of it, and a cracking glass—which had surely once held water or tea—sat next to it.

Harry’s eyes fell to the state bed, enormous and very tall. Beyond its headboard were dozens of photos and newspaper clipping cut out. Entranced, Harry moved forward. As he got closer, he realized with horror that many of these cutouts contained references to Lord Voldemort. Sweating, he took a step back.

Wild ideas ran though his head. He’d recently spent nine months under the care of Barty Crouch Jr., thinking the man to be Alastor Moody. Had he been tricked again? Had one of Voldemort’s followers taken up the guise of Sirius to lure him here to his death?

 _But then why not kill me outright?_ Harry thought to himself. _Why send me here to be alone?_

Harry kept his wand at the ready and returned to the hall. As he closed the door to the bedroom, he noticed for the first time, a plaque with a name.

_Regulus Black._

“Harry?”

Harry screamed and turned around, raising his wand. Expelliarmus was forming on his lips when he saw, once again, that it was his godfather who had snuck up on him.

“S—Sirius?” Harry asked uncertainly.

“Yes, I promise it’s me, Harry, you can put your wand down.”

Harry lowered his wand but did not pocket it again. “I...”

“You were a little too fast for me, and I apologize. I underestimated how fast those muggle cars can go sometimes. I meant to be here before you.”

Sirius looked over Harry’s shoulder and saw what door he had been closing. His eyes narrowed. “Here, come away from there,” he urged, snapping the door shut firmly and pulling Harry gently down the hall by his shoulders.

“I can turn into Snuffles if you’re worried I’m some sort of imposter,” Sirius assured him as they walked back down the hall.

“Oh that’s okay,” Harry said. He didn’t suppose a Death Eater would have offered to do such a thing...or indeed that one would even have known of the extra nickname Sirius had given only to Harry, Ron, Hermione and Dumbledore.

Sirius nodded. “I am truly sorry, Harry, this place must have given you a real fright,” he said. Harry heard a definite note of embarrassment in Sirius’s tone. “But, this is my parents’ house. Well, it’s mine now, since they’re dead.”

That explained a lot.

“I’m sorry,” Harry said automatically, but Sirius waved at him dismissively.

“Don’t be,” he said. “Besides, my mother is still going strong, even in death. I assume you met her in the entryway?”

“Is the woman in the portrait your mother?”

“Yes,” said Sirius bitterly. “And I’m sorry you had to encounter her. I’ve closed the curtains on her portrait which should shut her up for awhile.”

“Can’t she go to another picture?”

Sirius frowned. “She doesn’t usually do that. Anyway, come with me, let’s get you moved in.”

They returned to the front door where Sirius levitated Harry’s trunk and began to conduct it up the second set of stairs. Harry picked up his school bag and followed.

“Sirius,” he said. “How did you get your wand back?”

“It’s not mine,” Sirius said sadly. “Well, not my original, at least. That one is still locked up in Azkaban. They take them from you, you know, and keep them somewhere deep below the ground. Sometimes during lighting storms, when the air is just right, you can hear your wand calling out to you...but you can never reach it.”

Sirius’s voice had turned stony. “Anyway,” he said, shaking his head a little. “This is one of my other wands. Not my favorite, but still.”

“You have more than one wand?” Harry asked.

“Everyone in my family had several. Oh, here we go,” Sirius stopped on the second floor landing and opened an unmarked door. “Room for you,” he said. “Down the hall from me.”

Harry was trying very hard to keep his bearings in this enormous house. He looked down the hall opposite to the direction of Sirius’s supposed bedroom and thought he saw a familiar window. “Is this where I was before?” he asked curiously.

“Yes,” Sirius said. “Round that corner is another set of stairs that connects with the hallway near the kitchen.”

“Okay,” Harry said. He followed Sirius into the room, which was just as musty and stale as the other bedroom had been. Sirius lowered his trunk onto the rug in front of the fireplace, releasing about five years of dust into the air as he did so. He and Harry both coughed.

“Disgusting the state this place has fallen into,” Sirius muttered. “But I’ll clean it up for you, if you...if you don’t mind it being a bit dusty for awhile. I just...”

Harry was beaming. “I love it,” he said truthfully. For even if he spent the rest of his adolescence wading through dust and grime, he wouldn’t trade living with Sirius for the world.

* * *

Sirius and Harry’s reunion was unfortunately very short-lived. Sirius didn’t even spend the night in his own house. Instead, he informed Harry that, regretfully, Lupin was expecting him back that evening. With a few quick waves of his wand, Sirius shook free most of the spiderwebs and banished some of the dust from Harry’s bedroom, casting him an embarrassed smile as he did so. Then he gave Harry some hurried instructions about rooms to avoid and dashed from the house, promising that his and Lupin’s business would be done soon, and that until then, Sirius would return as frequently as possible.

Grimmauld Place was less lonely than Harry thought it would be, and truth be told, it was kind of nice to be Sirius’s little secret for the moment. Harry got the distinct feeling that Sirius was enjoying getting one over on Albus Dumbledore a little more than he was letting on.

 _Let him have some fun, poor bloke,_ Harry thought. He wondered if—to Sirius—this felt like old times. Harry imagined elaborate scenarios in his head that involved his teenaged father sneaking around with Sirius, perhaps hiding out at each others’ houses.

So Harry spent his first night at Grimmauld Place content and excited. The house was empty and decrepit, but Harry liked the solitude. And part of him enjoyed being hidden. No one knew he was here. Not his friends, not the Dursley, and least of all Albus Dumbledore.

It brought some much needed peace.

“Don’t worry,” Sirius had said to him. “This house is warded to the gills. My father put every warding spell known to wizardkind up here, and they’re as strong as ever. You’ll have no visitors. Just don’t go outside.”

The morning after his arrival, Harry awoke to a rapping on the bedroom window. Bleary-eyed, he pulled back the curtains to see Hedwig sulkily scratching at the foggy glass. Harry let her in.

“Sorry for making you fly home from the train station,” he said apologetically while Hedwig searched the bedroom for a suitable roost. “But you know how Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon are. Anyway, I’m glad you found me.”

Hedwig hooted once and closed her eyes, settling on the headboard.

“Yeah, you can rest. I won’t be sending any letters for awhile. I’m...relaxing,” Harry said. He left Hedwig to nap and set off to explore the extravagant house in daylight.

There were four floors to Grimmauld Place, not including the attic or the basement. It slowly started to dawn on Harry as he examined the ornate portraits in the library that Sirius’s family must have been very rich.

And by the looks of the ancient genealogy tomes and the plethora of family crests emblazoned on everything from the newelposts to the teacups, Harry could figure Sirius’s family for _old_ rich. Aristocrats of some sort.

Harry wondered if his father had ever visited this house. Or his mother. They must have had a great time running amok somewhere so large and exciting. He pictured eleven year-olds, home for winter break and playing hide and seek in the huge drawing rooms. He thought of sixteen year-olds sneaking wine up onto the third floor balconies to drink and watch the stars.

Harry himself probably could have played here as a child, if only his parents and Sirius hadn’t been ripped from him. A melancholic bitterness swirled in his stomach as he flipped through some dusty magazines he’d found sitting next to an armchair in the downstairs sitting room. As neglected as Grimmauld Place had been for many years, Harry could tell it had once been a very well-maintained—

“—home!”

Harry screamed for the second time in twenty-four hours and spun around, dropping the musty magazines to the carpeted floor, where a sturdy cloud of dust shook free.

“Who are—Dobby?” he coughed, waving dust from his face and trying to focus. There was indeed a small house elf in front of him, long ears wobbling with rage.

“Defiling my masters’ home!” the elf screeched again, and this time, Harry realized that it was not Dobby. Nor Winky. Nor any other elf he had met.

“I—I’m sorry?” Harry said quickly. “Who are…?”

“Kreacher cannot fathom what the brat would want with his poor masters’ home, no...”

Harry stared in horror. He had been upset by the sight of Dobby when they had first met, the little elf wrapped in a wrinkled pillow case, littered with stains. But this...Kreacher?...was somehow worse. Around his waist was a sagging loincloth, so discolored that it must have been years since it was last cleaned. He was so wrinkled it was a miracle the elf didn’t collapse onto the floor in a puddle of skin. His watery eyes didn’t have the same cowed, tearful look of Dobby’s, but there was a bitterness to them that Harry did not like.

Harry apologized again and tried to ask the elf a couple of questions, but Kreacher seemed to have forgotten he was there. The elf turned and started shuffling away, muttering about the “young masters”.

“Master Sirius has been here...Kreacher can smell him. Putrid brat of a boy never was worth the trouble…”

Harry’s ears perked up at the mention of Sirius, but no matter how he called after Kreacher, the elf ignored him, eventually disappearing behind a vase in the hallway. Harry spun the vase to the side, sending the skeleton of an iris crumbling to dust on the carpet, but couldn’t see where the elf had vanished to.

“Kreacher?” Sirius said that afternoon when he stopped by with dinner and Harry told him what had transpired. “I honestly didn’t know he was still alive! I’m sorry, Harry, I would have warned you if I’d known that was the case...”

“It’s okay,” Harry said shrugging. He took the box of Chinese takeout Sirius had brought for him and started in on it eagerly.

“You’re covered in dust,” Sirius said worryingly, brushing a hand through Harry’s hair, shaking free a lot of dirt.

“M’fine,” Harry said earnestly. “I’ll shower as soon as I find one that turns on.”

“Dumbledore and the others are definitely going to want this place cleaned up,” Sirius said with a sigh.

Harry shot his godfather a questioning look. Sirius sat down at the kitchen table next to him and started eating, as well. “Dumbledore has agreed to use my home as headquarter for the Order of the Phoenix.”

“The Order of the Phoenix?”

“That’s what we called ourselves during the First War, at least,” Sirius explained. “Your mum and dad, myself, Remus, and a bunch of our friends. Those of us who were fighting against Voldemort.”

Harry nodded. “When will everyone arrive?” he asked, a little excited and a little sad. He wouldn’t say no to a little more time alone with his thoughts.

Sirius rolled his eyes. “Next month at the earliest,” he muttered. “Although Remus will probably be here before next week is over.”

“Do you need me to help you clean?” Harry asked. “I don’t have any summer homework or anything, so I could definitely get a few rooms ready for the, uh...Order.”

Sirius smiled fondly. “You don’t have to do that, Harry,” he said.

But Harry insisted, and Sirius relented incredibly easily. He gave Harry a quick list of rooms not to touch, warned him that there were a lot of dark artefacts in the house (and so to not poke or prod too hard at something that looked like it didn’t want cleaned), and told him not to expect any help from Kreacher.

“Stay away from him, honestly. And my mother’s portrait, too. If she wakes up, close the curtains. If Kreacher gives you any trouble, threaten to free him. I’m going to try to be back tomorrow morning. We can have breakfast together!”

Harry smiled. Sirius jotted down a list of different cleansing spells (and worryingly, a few defensive ones) handed Harry the list and gave him a quick, one-armed hug before running off.

So Harry set his mind to cleaning. It was something he was good at, and could easily get lost in. He’d spent many an hour scrubbing Aunt Petunia’s floors and waxing Uncle Vernon’s company car. He knew his way around a scrub brush.

He made fast progress, occasionally helped by Hedwig, who wasn’t afraid to dive attack some of the larger insects Harry found crawling around in drawers and behind curtains. After a particularly grueling few hours in the first floor study, Harry thought he was losing his mind. Items kept disappearing as he sorted them. Sirius had told him to be ruthless, and to clear out anything he didn’t see a use for. Harry assumed Sirius would want to double check the things he threw out, and so he was carefully setting them in large sacks that never seemed to fill.

After some time, Harry realized the culprit. It was Kreacher. The elf had been stealing the items he thought Harry was throwing away. Perplexed, Harry stopped sacking items entirely.

Unsurprisingly, Sirius had put his bedroom on the list of rooms that Harry shouldn’t go into, and Harry assumed Sirius was uncomfortable with him digging around in his room. It made sense to Harry. Bedrooms were private, and Sirius probably wanted to go through his before anyone else saw it.

Strangely, there was one other bedroom Harry had been told not to enter, and Sirius’s eyes had darkened when he’d said it.

The bedroom down the hall. Confused, Harry had put two and two together and realized that Sirius was talking about the room with the name plaque, the one that read _Regulus Black._

So why hadn’t he just said _Regulus’s Bedroom?_ It was like he was avoiding the name.

Originally, Harry had intended to obey Sirius’s request. He had no real reason to go into that other bedroom again...until he saw Kreacher disappear into it with an armful of trinkets.

“Kreacher,” Harry called, following the elf. When he pushed open the door, Kreacher was nowhere to be found, but there were little piles of garbage, knick-knacks and other household paraphernalia piled on the bed and floor, mussing up the otherwise organized room.

“Kreacher,” Harry said with a sigh. “I don’t think Sirius wants you leaving all this stuff in piles around the house. We’re trying to clean, and...”

Harry was about to start gathering up the rubbish piles when he was seized by a reckless curiosity. Who was Regulus Black and why was Sirius so protective of his bedroom?

Harry dug around in desk drawers until he found some school papers and photographs. Whoever Regulus Black was, he’d been a Slytherin seeker at Hogwarts. Harry matched the name on the team photo to a slight boy with jet-black hair and stony grey eyes...a porcelain face draped in haughty good looks.

 _Definitely related to Sirius,_ Harry thought. _Must be a brother?_ Another photo seemed to confirm this. Harry found a framed family portrait behind the desk lamp. In it was a man who looked so much like Sirius that Harry almost mistook him for his godfather before he noticed the teenage boy seated in front of the man—that was Sirius. Harry recognized him. Behind him stood another adult, a woman, and Harry immediately pegged her as Sirius’s mother, because she matched the portrait in the entryway perfectly, albeit with fewer flyaway hairs and a lot more composure.

Finally, there was Regulus, seated next to Sirius looking poised and proud. The photo was magical, and so it moved. Harry noticed whenever Sirius’s parents looked away or towards each other, Sirius squeezed his brother’s hand. Regulus pretended not to notice.

Harry frowned. Sirius had never mentioned having a brother. Perhaps it had just never come up. But if Sirius had a brother, where was he? Why would he have just left his childhood home to rot?

_Why would he have left his older brother in jail?_

Harry stopped snooping and left the room, taking the stolen trinkets with him as he did. All the way down the hall, he heard Kreacher scuttling after him angrily, waiting for his chance to steal back the items and re-hide them.

* * *

At the end of day two at Number 12, Grimmauld Place, Harry went to bed feeling satisfied. He’d cleaned nearly three whole rooms. With no one to distract him, he’d gotten a lot done and couldn’t wait to show Sirius. At this rate, he might be able to clean the whole house (at least the rooms that weren’t guarded by unruly spiders or doxies) before Professor Lupin arrived.

Then, as the clock he’d rewound was just approaching 5 a.m., Harry was awoken for the second time by his godfather standing over him.

Sirius was sitting on the bed next to him, stroking his hair. Harry awoke slowly, and might have even gone back to sleep were it not for the chirping of the birds outside. Blinking, he looked up through the waxing sunlight and flinched when he noticed Sirius sitting there.

“Sorry,” Sirius whispered. “I didn’t mean to wake you. I got back a little earlier than I thought, and just...”

Harry sat up, running a hand self-consciously through his messy hair. “How long have you been in here?”

“Not long,” Sirius insisted, and Harry didn’t believe him.

“Come downstairs,” Sirius continued. He stood up and motioned for Harry to follow. “I brought things for breakfast.”

Too sleepy to do much other than obey, Harry got up, threw on a houserobe and followed his godfather downstairs. On the kitchen table he found several boxes of doughuts.

“There’s healthier food on the counter.” Sirius pointed before grabbing a maple bar. “But really it can wait.”

Harry smiled. Sirius seemed to be in a good mood. He and Harry talked a bit about nothing in particular before Harry tried to weasel some Order information out of his godfather.

“Never you mind who Remus is talking with. Just know that he’s safe and he’ll be back tonight, which gives me about twelve hours before he’ll be noticing me missing.”

Harry knew Sirius was changing the topic to distract him, but he didn’t mind.

“Tell me some things about your family, Sirius,” Harry asked innocently. Sirius balked.

“I don’t think we really need to talk about that,” he said uneasily.

Harry cut his jelly doughnut in half to inspect just what kind of filling he was getting himself into. “Come on, Sirius, I’m curious! I don’t know anything about your family and I’m sleeping in their house. Tell me about your parents.”

Sirius rolled his eyes. “They were bigoted idiots who detested the very sight of me. Happy now? Why don’t we move on to a different topic.”

“Okay, then how about you talk about your little brother?”

Sirius’s eyes narrowed and he set down his coffee. “Who told you about Regulus? Was it Kreacher?”

“No,” Harry said. “Kreacher hasn’t spoken to me since I ran into him yesterday. Though he’s had some choice mutterings about you...”

“You went into his room, didn’t you?” Sirius accused. He didn’t sound particularly angry, but he was staring very intently at Harry.

“Yes,” Harry said honestly. “But honestly, I didn’t need to. His room’s so close to yours, and his name is on the door. I just kind of assumed he was your brother.”

“Fair enough,” Sirius said.

“So tell me about him.”

“He’s dead,” said Sirius shortly.

“Huh?”

Harry was shocked by the bluntness of Sirius’s tone.

“How did he die?”

“During the First War like everyone else. Little idiot was always too soft. Got led around by the nose constantly and it eventually got him into some serious trouble.”

“I’m sorry,” Harry said quietly. He’d known Sirius’s parents were dead, but this was a little different. Losing a younger sibling seemed so much...harsher.

“Don’t be,” Sirius said sharply. “Listen, I’ve got a surprise for you.” From a bag on the counter he pulled out several bottles of liquor. “You’ve had Firewhisky before, no?”

“Huh-uh,” Harry shook his head. “Haven’t tried it.”

Sirius smiled devilishly. “Oh, then this will be extra fun. I’m going to leave them here in the cupboard—don’t look at me like that, it’s 6 a.m.!—and then tonight after Remus falls asleep, I’ll sneak back and we can open a bottle, how does that sound?”

“Wicked!” Harry exclaimed.

“No opening it without me.”

“Of course not,” Harry promised.

Sirius smiled. “Okay, then finish your breakfast and let’s go upstairs. I can show you my old broom, and maybe we’ll do a little cleaning, too...”

The day seemed to fly by, and Harry was really dreading Sirius’s departure. Even though he knew his godfather would be back in the night, he was bitter that he had to leave at all.

“I wish you could just stay here with me,” Harry said, pouting, as the two of them stunned spiders together in the second floor drawing room. Sirius grinned at him.

“You remind me so much of someone else...only that someone else would have _loved_ the sneaking around.”

Harry assumed Sirius was talking about his father and smiled. Sirius put his hands on Harry’s shoulders and massaged gently. “Just relax and enjoy your summer. The house will be full of Order members before you know it. Remus, Dumbledore, all the Weasleys...”

Harry smiled at the thought. Sirius’s hands felt very good, and he was going a bit weak in the knees from the sensation.

“Kreacher always knew the oldest brat was up to no good, corrupting, menacing thing! Now he has come back...”

Harry started and Sirius let go of him. Kreacher had appeared in the doorway and was angrily muttering about Sirius’s proclivities.

“The scum he would keep as company before returning home just to—”

“Get out!” Sirius yelled, but Kreacher didn’t budge. Sirius actually had to chase him off, threatening clothes the whole way.

While Sirius was gone, Harry meandered further into the drawing room. There behind several large—and very dead—potted trees, he found an enormous tapestry. It was covered by curtains, much like the ones that blocked Sirius’s mother’s portrait, and the curtains were clear of dust, which meant someone, likely Sirius, had recently closed them.

With a shrug, Harry opened them and marveled at the enormous family tree before him. It dated back to before the middle ages. Fascinated, Harry looked closer. After a few minutes of overwhelmed staring, he zeroed in on the lower branches of the tree, looking for Sirius’s name.

He didn’t find him, instead there was a burn mark next to the name _Regulus Black_. Harry noticed several of these burn marks scattered throughout the tapestry.

 _Why was Sirius blasted off his own family tree?_ Harry wondered. He was beginning to feel less welcome in Grimmauld Place by the hour. At first it had seemed fun to romp around in Sirius’s childhood home, but between Kreacher, the screaming portrait of Sirius’s mother and Sirius’s own bitter admissions, the house was feeling less inviting and more...haunted.

Haunted by things other than ghosts. Haunted by memories and...hate.

Harry bit his lip. He was about to turn around when he noticed something curious. He looked more closely at Regulus Black’s name.

Regulus had been born about thirty years ago, and according to this tapestry…

...he had not yet died.

* * *

Harry did not mention his discovery to Sirius. It was possible that the tapestry was out of date. It was also possible that it was accurate and that Sirius had a reason for lying to Harry about his brother. Really Harry had had quite enough of being lied to by the few adults he had in his life, but Sirius was...different.

Sirius was damaged, and Harry felt closer to him than he did to the likes of Dumbledore, McGonagall, Lupin and the others. So as bitter as he felt about it, Harry could let Sirius keep this secret. After all, there were plenty of things Harry had not volunteered to tell his godfather.

Like the uncomfortable feeling of dread and inadequacy that came up every time his father was mentioned. (Or his mother, but Sirius was much more inclined to talk about James, and seemed awkward at the mention of Lily.) It were as though Harry were at war with himself: one half desperate to fill the void his parents had left behind (and the hole James’s death had left on Sirius’s heart) and the other desperate to be free of the two dead spectres who haunted his every waking moment.

Part of why Harry Potter appreciated his friend Hermione Granger so much was her lack of a magical background. She had no expectations for Harry concerning his parents (expectations concerning schoolwork was another matter entirely), for even Ron Weasley had grown up in a family that viewed Harry Potter’s dead parents as the noblest of heroes.

And it was hard to hate such perfect people. Harry felt ashamed every time a cursory compliment annoyed him. Every time someone said he looked like his father, or that he had his mother’s eyes, Harry’s heart would swell with pride...but also a measure of frustration.

There was love. There was also resentment.

Harry was beginning to think that the two were more intertwined than he had previously thought, and separating them seemed to be a dangerous thing, like a surgeon pulling out everything ugly from inside you. The gross, sticky, bloody pieces that keep your smile alive.

As promised, Sirius disappeared for the acceptable hours of the evening, returning very late in the night, long after Harry assumed Professor Lupin to be asleep. Sirius’s absence lasted for all of five hours, but for Harry, it seemed like days.

Sirius’s Firewhisky tasted like hot pain, and Harry found he didn’t much like the stuff, but Sirius was having such a good time that Harry drank anyway, letting the stained wallpaper covering the house fade in and out of his vision.

At some point, Sirius dragged him out of the kitchen and into his bedroom.

“So I don’t have to carry you later,” he explained. “This way, when you want to pass out, you just can.”

Harry nodded sluggishly. He was very unfocused, but still managed to be a little excited about seeing Sirius’s childhood bedroom.

“So you lived here,” Harry said slowly, marveling at the postered walls and the bright red bedspread. Sirius chuckled and pushed him inside, closing the door behind them.

“Until I was sixteen,” he said. “Then I left for your dad’s.”

“You moved out?” Harry asked, turning around.

“You could say that.”

“Wish I could have moved out of the Dursleys’...wait,” Harry paused to think. “I have done that!”

Sirius laughed. “You should sit down,” he said suddenly, catching Harry as he stumbled. Harry took his arm and they both fell onto the bed.

“So,” said Sirius in a mocking stern tone. To Harry, his godfather didn’t sound very drunk. Harry eyed his glass suspiciously, wondering if he’d being given stronger stuff or if he was just that inexperienced. “Who has your eye?”

Harry looked at him. Sirius was splayed out against the headboard with his arms behind his head, lounging like he hadn’t a care in the world. For the first time, Harry could really see the vestiges of the attractive boy who’d been wrongly sent to Azkaban. Maybe it was the square meals Lupin had probably been feeding him, but Sirius looked a bit more like the face Harry remembered from old photographs. Although there was no returning to the man his original eyes—the ones that had shone like mischievous stars—Sirius’s eyes were permanently haunted. Pained. Dying.

“What are you about? Talking?” Harry realized that the covers were very soft, and suddenly wanted to stare at them very closely. As though from a great distance, he could hear Sirius laughing at his drunken behavior.

“I meant who are you dating? Or trying to date?”

Harry thought briefly of Cho but didn’t want to talk about her. He opened his mouth to make something up but then closed it. He shrugged. “No one,” he said honestly. “I don’t date at people now with my eyes.”

Sirius’s barking laughter again. “Really? I thought maybe you were with Hermione.”

“Who?”

More laughter. “Your friend? Hermione Granger?”

“Oh,” Harry remembered. “No, no. Only friends. Besides, she’s gonna’ marry that quidditch guy she got from Karkarov.”

“Right,” Sirius sputtered, barely able to hold back more laughter. “Harry come here, why don’t you lay down?”

“I am.”

Sirius rolled his eyes and Harry felt himself pulled forward until his head was resting on Sirius’s chest. Harry pawed impotently at the arm holding him down.

“You’re not soft like a pillow,” he complained.

“These pillows are full of dust, you don’t want them,” said Sirius, and Harry relented. He relaxed back and let Sirius gently stroke his neck. From his position propped up against his godfather, Harry had a good view of the bedroom ceiling and two of the walls.

He frowned contemplatively. “Sirius,” he said seriously. “There are a lot of naked women on your walls.”

“I put them up years ago, when I was about your age. Mostly to annoy my parents.”

“Why did you have them?” Harry asked in confusion.

“What, don’t you have any magazines in your bedroom at your aunt and uncle’s?”

It was Harry’s turn to laugh. “No,” he said. “But I still put up photos to upset them.”

“Did you now?” Sirius asked. “Of who?”

Harry looked up at him coyly. “Mostly of you,” he said, not untruthfully. He’d used any excuse he could find to remind Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon that his escaped lunatic of a godfather was out of prison and paying attention.

Sirius’s face was swimming in his vision, but he seemed to be smiling, his eyes closed in exasperated laughter. Harry was pulled by the Firewhisky into a very sound sleep only to awake a few hours later.

“Oh, ow,” he clapped a hand to his forehead and sat up. Things were foggy for a second and his stomach did a couple flips but then settled. He felt Sirius’s arms slide off of him.

At some point, Harry’s shoes and jacket had been removed. Probably Sirius, he figured. Both he and his godfather were under the covers now, Sirius sleeping soundly and by the look of things, dreaming. Harry watched him for a moment. He knew he should get up and go to his own bed, but he’d never been drunk before, and part of him really didn’t want to be alone. Sirius seemed safe. Harry laid back down, trying to leave a respectable amount of space between them. He didn’t want Sirius to wake up with Harry clinging to him like a small child.

A small creak nearly startled Harry right out of his own skin. He watched in horror as the door to Sirius’s bedroom swung open slowly. He was about to yell for Sirius when the bright moonlight spilling in from the freshly-cleaned window illuminated the small figure of a house elf.

Kreacher.

Kreacher didn’t say anything, but Harry could see his beady little eyes staring at the bed. After a few more silent moments, Sirius began to mutter in his sleep, mostly nonsense, but there was a name that kept popping up.

Kreacher started murmuring, too, angrily.

“Always the same. A monster of a child come back as a monster of a man. Master and Mistress should be glad to be long in their graves without ever...”

“Kreacher,” Harry whispered desperately. Having two voices talking at him in the dark like this—one insane and the other subconscious—was really unsettling. The curtains rustled and the moonlight shifted.

“A demon, a monster, destroys everything he touches. Massacred his own family from the inside out with all he took. And now look at it...”

Kreacher devolved into insults that Harry couldn’t understand. Then, after rummaging in Sirius’s desk drawers for a moment, the house elf left, casting one last glance towards Harry before he closed the door.

Sirius had shifted and was nestled up against Harry’s back with an arm over his waist. He was still talking, all of it incoherent. All of it except the name.

_Regulus._

Harry shivered a little. Sirius whispered the name into the small of his back with such practiced ease. Like a contented call to a lover long since settled into sleep.

* * *

Sirius had to leave early the next morning. Harry awoke in his godfather’s bed with a tray of breakfast laid out on the bedside table and a note explaining that Sirius—who had needed to be back before Lupin woke up—had not wanted to rouse Harry from his rest so incredibly early.

Harry picked cautiously at the blueberry muffin, thinking. He allowed himself to stay in bed until nearly noon, lounging off his slight headache, before he finally got dressed and continued with his cleaning work. He’d heard rustling and scratching coming from behind the library door, and so this time he approached his work armed with not just a brush and a bucket, but his wand, as well.

The noises turned out to be uncomfortably large spiders that had nested somewhere in the bookshelf next to the fireplace. When Harry pulled back one of the thick tomes, a dozen arachnids came surging out from behind it and Harry yelped, leaping back. Frantically, he dashed around the library, kicking up dust and stunning as many spiders as he could. It was a good distraction from all the week’s curiosities, which Harry was glad to have because he was finding it harder to allow Sirius his secrets.

He levitated their bodies into a bag and tied it shut, wondering what he should do with them all when he saw the papers.

In his haste to clear the library of spiders, he’d spilled open the pages of one of the larger books. Harry couldn’t read the title—it was in a language he’d never seen before—but the loose papers that had fallen out were in English. Impishly, Harry glanced at them.

They were letters. An array of them. All written in a hand Harry recognized very well.

Each one was from Sirius.

Some were love letters, full of poetry and sickly sweet words. Yet others were more rigid and formal. Some were full of very specific instructions on the brewing of potions or the procurement of...items.

All were addressed to Regulus Black, not by name, but by the moniker _little brother._

Harry bit his lip. He had definitely trodden on something he should not have found. The words in the letters seemed so unlike the man he’d known the last year. It began to dawn on Harry how little he really knew of Sirius Black.

Harry arranged the letters by date until he found the final one, which he read in full.

_Little Brother,_

_Did you think word would not reach me? That you could hide something like this? Do not prove yourself to be more of an idiot than you already have. You_ will _sit your cowardly arse down and you_ will _wait for me. At dawn I will come home and I expect you to be in your room._

_You will not tell Mother nor Father that I am coming._

_I will come and collect you and I will solve this problem for you._

_You have gotten yourself into enough trouble for now, I think._

Harry could almost feel the rage radiating off the letter. The parchment bore the tell-tale signs of having been angrily crumpled and smudged, though whether by Sirius or his brother, Harry was unsure. He was reminded briefly of Sirius’s scolding during the Triwizard tournament, when Harry had went walking with Viktor Krum.

Thinking of Krum reminded Harry of Cedric and he immediately shut the letters back inside their dusty volume.

That night, Harry awoke to the most horrific nightmares he had ever experienced. The Dark Lord...his followers...the pain and terror of that graveyard...it was all jumbled up. There was no coherent narrative within his dreams, only feeling. Harry tossed and turned before he finally jolted upright, sweat cascading down his face and neck.

To his horror, he realized he wasn’t alone. Someone was in his bedroom, and it took a few frantic moments for Harry to realize it was Sirius.

“Shh,” Sirius said quietly lighting a candle, illuminating his worried face. “It’s only me. I heard you having a nightmare.”

Harry frowned. Had he truly been loud enough for Sirius to have heard him in the other room? Or…

“I’m sorry,” Harry said.

“No, I’m sorry I frightened you,” said Sirius earnestly. Harry nodded.

“I just...when I didn’t immediately recognize you, I thought...”

Sirius’s eyes widened in understanding. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said again. “Harry, why don’t you come take a shower, you’re an absolute wreck.”

Harry wished he could see more of his godfather’s face. What wasn’t illuminated by the flickering candle flames was cast deeply into shadow, making Sirius look like some sort of spectre come crawling up from the depths of the house.

Harry wanted to refuse Sirius’s suggestion, but as he leaned back against his pillow, he felt his nightshirt sticking to his back. There were small rivulets of sweat pooling in the crooks of his arms and the hollow of his throat.

“O—okay,” Harry consented. “Maybe you’re right.”

On unsteady feet, Harry staggered from his bedroom and down the hall, Sirius gingerly caging his shoulders between steady hands, ready to catch Harry if he fell. As they passed one of the rooms that Harry had been forbidden from entering, Harry heard the distinct sounds of shuffling and scratching.

“W—what’s that?” he asked, alarmed and still on edge from his nightmares.

“Oh,” Sirius explained. “That’s Buckbeak.”

“Buckbeak is here?” Harry asked. “When did you sneak him in?”

“While you were sleeping, I set him up in my mother’s bedroom,” Sirius explained, steering Harry into the nearest bathroom. This was one so far that they had managed to mostly clean.

“Your parents had separate bedrooms?” Harry asked, but Sirius didn’t answer him. Instead he went straight to the ornate shower and slid back the glass doors to set the water running. Harry remembered when they had first tested the faucets in the house, and the water had run a sludgy black for hours. Now, however, it was clear and steaming. Harry almost sighed at the sight of it, his muscles relaxing.

“Thanks, Sirius,” he mumbled. He stood still in the middle of the bathroom for a few moments, expecting Sirius to leave, only he didn’t. Sirius approached Harry smoothly and peeled his nightshirt off his shoulders.

Before Harry could protest, Sirius was mumbling, talking to him gently about the nightmares that had plagued him in Azkaban while he helped Harry undress completely. Harry was captivated by Sirius’s voice and the horrific things he described. No one else would have ever thought to comfort him like this, he was sure. Soon he was standing naked on the tiled floor, his body replicated a dozen times over by the many mirrors, but any awkwardness or fear was kept at bay by Sirius’s soft hand on his chin.

Sirius looked him straight in the eyes while he recounted which terrors had managed to follow him even from the island. The ones that left the prison with him, he said, were the ones that he knew were _real._

Harry nodded, enraptured. Suddenly he was able to reconcile the silver-tongued love letters he’d found in the library with the man before him. As Sirius spoke, Harry found his will molding itself to fit Sirius. Should the man ask him for something he would have certainly complied.

Harry’s own fears weren’t leaving, but they were coming into a clearer focus. With each word and each soft touch, Sirius validated the worries that were weighing on Harry’s mind, and Harry felt that he almost could have fallen back to sleep right there.

But Sirius finally stopped talking and urged him gently into the shower. To Harry’s surprise, his godfather stepped in after him.

“S—Sirius?” Harry asked softly, but Sirius only shushed him. And there he stood, fully clothed and flush against Harry’s back, working a palm full of pine-scented body wash into Harry’s neck and shoulders.

Harry was grateful that Sirius had stayed close; it was as if he’d known how reluctant Harry was to be separated from him in that moment. Harry was also grateful that Sirius had not undressed, that he was willing to soak his shirt and trousers. Harry wasn’t sure he could have handled seeing Sirius naked just then...it would have shattered his illusion.

Speaking more than the occasional soft murmur of Sirius’s name would have done so, as well, and so Harry was silent while Sirius resumed his comforting commiseration. He was able to retain his pleasant illusion for the rest of the evening, remaining on the constant edge between sleep and wakefullness, between reality and fantasy. It was there in that comforting denial that he stayed while Sirius let his fingers linger on the clean skin of Harry’s shoulder, his lower back, his belly, and his cock…

Time seemed to distort. In one moment, Harry was standing in water so hot it nearly burned running down his body, while Sirius prized from his lips a soft, shuddering cry...and in what seemed to be a mere moment, he was dry and wrapped in a clean towel, laying once again on his bed, Sirius sitting against the headboard next to him, chattering soothingly about a Hogwarts adventure from many, many years ago.

When sleep came it was dreamless.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a comfort zone and I stick to it, okay?
> 
> There are two more chapters to come.


End file.
